Einstein Bros is also pretty good (it’s actually a tossup as to whether I like Bruegger’s or Einstein more) and there’s plenty of them in Vegas.
Heh, here in NYC, Tim Horton’s took over several locations that used to *be *Dunkin Donuts!
I had no idea Dunkin Donuts was so regional. They are *everywhere *here, I thought they were as wide a chain as Starbucks. Their slogan is even “America runs on Dunkin.”
We used to see Dunkin’ Donuts commercials so often in the '80s – “Time to make the doughnuts!” – that I assumed that it was a major national chain. More recently I checked their website and it turns out there’s only one location in the area where I grew up. I was surprised. Did they go through a major contraction at some point during or after the '80s?
What about chains that leave out one market? I’ve mentioned the “Everywhere but Buffalo” phenomenon before, where a large national chain will have a presence in almost every major and minor metropolitan area in the country, except the Buffalo, New York area.
Staples and Papa John’s are probably the most notable EBB chains, and some growing national chains such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s said they will never open a store in the Buffalo area. The Buffalo area is even shunned by regional chains; Pudgie’s Pizza, Dinosaur BBQ, and the like. Other chains arrive in Buffalo only after they’ve saturated the rest of the region or country; Chipotle, Starbucks and H&M come to mind.
Strangely, there’s over 100 Tim Hortons outlets in the Buffalo area. They’re spaced about a mile apart along most major streets. Regional chains in Buffalo (Mighty Taco, Ted’s, Anderson’s, Jim’s Steakout, Just Pizza, John & Mary’s, etc) generally don’t expand outside of the region, although some may have one stray location in the subbelt where the owner has a vacation home.
Did they give a reason?
A followup: like I said before, chains in Buffalo generally don’t expand outside of the region, but when they do, it’ll usually be some oddball, far-flung location - Ted’s Hot Dogs in Tempe, Arizona; Santora’s Pizza in Daytona Beach, Florida, and, best of all, Tops Supermarket in Thailand.
Basically, they’re limiting their New York State presence to New York City and its environs. I’ve heard some speculation that the state’s liquor laws may be a factor; you cant sell wine in grocery stores, but in the wealthy NYC area, volume more than makes up for the lost wine sales. I’ve heard liquor laws cited as reasons for the lack of Costco and World Market stores in the Buffalo area,. too.
Ikea also said “never” to Buffalo, stating that it won’t consider markets with less than 2,000,000 people, even though there’s metropolitan areas that are much smaller than Buffalo in Canada and through Europe with Ikea stores. Ikea has a store in Austin, with a metro of about 1,700,000, while the Buffalo and Rochester metros combined number about 2,300,000 residents.
I know they disappeared from Illinois and Indiana in the late 1980s/early 1990s. They were prominent in Indianapolis and smaller metro areas in Indiana from at least the 1970s, and the last locations I can recall closed around 1993; similarly, the last times I visited any in Champaign/Urbana and Chicago were around 1992/1993. I’m not sure if these were corporate stores lost in a contraction, or franchises that lost the license, but I didn’t see another DD until I drove through New York in 2008.
DD has come back to Indianapolis with a vengeance since then, and has more locations now than they did originally.
I’ve identified the problem. You bought sauce, instead of barbecue.
Their management is smart enough to never want to have to go to Buffalo? 
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and some growing national chains such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s said they will never open a store in the Buffalo area
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It doesn’t have to do with average income since many of the chains that avoid the Buffalo area are in poorer cities. Instead, it has to do with age. The demographics for the Buffalo-Niagara Falls metro area are among the oldest in the U.S. and the marketing people for national chains prefer to target young consumers since they’re more open to new things and they’ll be able to squeeze money from them for a longer period of time.
I can do a lot better than that, as I’ve indicated: Los Angeles is the 2nd largest US city, and it has no Dunkin Donuts at all.
Huh. I never knew they originated as a US operation. We shop at Tops only because there’s one right by us and it’s convenient, but it’s really a sad outfit. They try to make themselves seem upmarket, but the phrase “putting lipstick on a pig” springs to mind. When we’re out and about on the weekends, there are much better options to shop at.
Well, I’m not sure about the stores you saw which had closed back then, but Dunkin’ Donuts are now pretty ubiquitous in Chicago and the suburbs. According to the store locator on DD’s web site, there are at least 50 locations within 10 miles of my house in suburban Chicago.
There are 150 Dunkin’ Donuts in Thailand according to this link, which may be a little old, as I swear there are more than that now. They were already present when I first arrived here in the 1980s.
We just got our second Krispy Kreme too.
Sorry, my post was poorly written. Didn’t mean to claim that they were still gone in Illinois; I meant to claim that there was a period from the early 90s to the early/mid 00s where they were gone. DD is ubiquitous in Indianapolis now as well (and have more locations now than they did in their original pre-90s expansions). The decade+ pull out is what’s weird. (And I’ve been reading online of similar DD pull outs in various regions through the early 00s. Apparently the New England area is the only area where they’ve maintained a continuous presence.)
I always kind of wondered what happened to Dunkin Donuts on the West Coast. I grew up in Vancouver, WA, and when I was a kid there were several DD stores around (this would be in the 1970s). Then they just sort of disappeared, and I seem to recall most of the locations becoming Winchell’s.
As to the number of Dunkin Donuts stores in New England:
http://www.out-at-home.com/archives/2231
Krispy Kreme … I never did get what the hype was. I now live in a small city in central WA, and we didn’t get a KK here. But some local charities actually did fundraisers that involved KK donuts. You’d buy X number of boxes, at a marked-up price, I’d assume, and then when they had enough orders they’d drive a van to Seattle and return with a load of donuts that you’d then come and pick up on the designated day.
I’ve seen the same thing with spaghetti sauce. I expect spaghetti sauce (and pizza sauce) to taste “tomato-y”, with plenty of oregano and basil and garlic. Well, when I lived at the local men’s homeless shelter for a few years (my stepfather was the director of the place, and I’d moved in to reduce my expenses while trying to get myself out of debt), there was a local married couple who’d show up once a month to cook us spaghetti dinner, complete with their own homemade sauce recipe.
It was the most godawful stuff I’d ever tasted. It literally tasted like one of the primary ingredients was “red Kool-Aid”. I found myself wondering where in the US is “fruity and sweet” a popular characteristic of spaghetti sauce. I’ve been a professional cook for 28 years, but I’d never heard of this.
They are still going strong here. There is one two blocks from where I sit.
:nodding: That particular one supplies most, if not all, the DD’s in the area (I know this because the girls who work at our local DD told us outright). I believe there’s another one north of Boston that does the same. There was a write-up about it in the local paper a few years ago.
I’ve rarely been disappointed by DD coffee. My husband has had a few scorched in his lifetime, but by and large we prefer it over almost every other place in the area, Starbucks included.
I was surprised when a friend of mine told that me that 7-11 was popular in Japan and she was happy to have one near her apartment. I checked and 7-11 is actually Japanese owned. Apparently the Japanese like small local markets more than big supermarkets.